Cry Pilot

by Joel Dane

  We’re pumped but playing it cool. We talk smack about Group Bay. Pico leads a call-and-response that’s so pornographic that Voorhivey starts blushing. Then we step into the elevator and find Group Bay waiting for us to join them. Because we’re not fighting against them. We’re fighting with them.

  Our platoon against Platoon 5021.

  United at last. Except Group Bay eyes me pretty hotly.

  I don’t look at the regrowth-bandage on the redhead’s thumb or the film around Elfano’s ankle. She’s a stocky woman with high, pointed ears, which is why Group Bay calls her Elfano instead of her real surname, Lofano. She doesn’t look all that pixieish right now, though.

  The air thickens with the expectation of violence. At least Cali is a half step behind Rana like always, which means she doesn’t come across like a mad dog at the moment. More like a mad dog straining on a leash.

  “M’bari says this is what the TLs wanted to avoid,” Ting messages me. “With the gas attack and the kerfuffle in the hallway.”

  “The kerfuffle,” I reply.

  “The brawl! The scuffle, the affray. I mean, I don’t think affray is a word. M’bari says we were supposed to exhaust our hostility without really hurting each other? Then we’d serve a punishment together, to develop bonds. In order to, um, bond. But now—”

  She quiets when Ojedonn limps toward me, his knee filmed into a brace. He looks even bigger now that he’s not coughing and weeping in a gas attack.

  He points at me with a finger like a missile. “Me and you, Kaytu.”

  “You make a pretty couple,” Pico tells him, grinning despite his watchful eyes. “But I warn you, he’s a crappy dancer.”

  Shakrabarti slips beside me, looking like a model with a mine-shooter held jauntily across his shoulder. He effortlessly draws everyone’s attention, then twines his fingers in my hair. Trying to defuse the tension. “Kaytu’s got rhythm but not much stamina.”

  There’s a scattering of laughter, before Ojedonn cuts it off with a gesture. “Me and him are taking point. With my skills and his evil, ask me what we’re going to do to 5021 Platoon.”

  “What’re we going to do?” Elfano asks.

  Ojedonn pats the brace on his leg. “Kneecap them.”

  And you know what?

  We do.

  They’re not pitting us against mock-ups anymore. For two weeks, the entire platoon fights together against other platoons. Against 5021, against 0316, against 4944. In the tower blocks, the laminate forest, and terrafixing terrain. In the faux space station and the faux dreadnought—both with and without faux vector plasma.

  We win two thirds of the practice battles, and my lens tells me this:

  Kaytu, Maseo

  chance of completion: 93%

  platoon rank: 07 of 25

  5323 rating: AAA

  I’m used to a single reprimand by now, and I don’t give a shit about the 07. But the AAA makes my heart sing. We plateaued at AA for a week, but look at us now: a perfect platoon rating.

  Then our training refocuses on lampreys, and on the first day a wildly gyrating fabrication unit cuts through us. Granted, we’re exhausted from three capture-the-crown exercises in a row, but that thing flattened us.

  Only once, though. We win the rematch.

  We’re not the same people who started JST months ago. We’re hard and fast and tough, and greater than the sum of our parts.

  Three minutes before lights-out, Ting bounds onto my bunk and hugs me. “We did it! Wediditwedidit!” She’s beaming and weeping. “We graduate Phase One tomorrow!”

  “I know,” I tell her.

  “I know you know! You know I know you know!” Her eyes shine. “Guess what my completion number is?”

  “No idea.”

  “Guess!”

  “Eighty percent?”

  “Eighty-six! Eighty-six out of every hundred Tings who get this far make it all the way through!” She starts fanning herself. “I’m never going back again. They’re not sending me back, not ever. Oh, thank the Louvre!”

  “What about the other fourteen Tings?” Ridehorse asks.

  “I hate those stupid Tingtings!” Ting says, wiping happy tears from her face. “I mean I don’t really believe in multiverses anyway, because why is Ting Prime, I mean me, why am I stuck in this boring universe instead of one with people who turn into butterflies or codeware?”

  Pico throws his pillow at her. “You are butterfly codeware.”

  Ting stays in my bunk, nattering while I doze, but she’s right. We did it. We graduate from Phase One tomorrow and start getting battle-tested. We’ll be attached to units in hot conflicts, getting real-world experience in skirmishes against insurgents and remorts.

  Then we’ll face lampreys.

  The Phase One graduation ceremony consists of us grabbing our duffels and moving into a barracks nine floors higher in the base. The Training Liaison leads us in a circuitous route. We trot into the shuttle terminal past HR Sergeant Zhu, who is standing in front of forty-odd new arrivals in civvie clothes.

  “Look at your decruitment bonus again,” the HR Sergeant is telling them. “Every day that number gets closer to zero. There will never be a better time to leave than right now.”

  He lenses my squad a silent acknowledgment as we pass: soldiers.

  Our new barracks includes a communal living space, and our new rules are lax. Nobody cares when we wake, as long as we’re bathed and prepped on time. Mess hall is an open hour, instead of forty-two strictly apportioned minutes.

  So far, I like Phase Two.

  Rookies aren’t individually assigned to new units for their first contact with genuine hostiles, of course: an already bonded training group stays together through Phase Two, embedded as a whole into low-intensity situations. Into low-risk situations. Still, we’re given live ammunition during our deployments and assigned real tasks.

  Next comes Anvil Month, a final deployment into hot-risk theaters, fighting alongside veteran units in hot conflicts. After Anvil Month, they’ll scatter us across various military departments, wherever aptitude tests and corporate requirements send us. They’ll probably keep a few of us together, to preserve our bond—our valuable, efficiency-increasing bond—but it’s more important that we’re assigned to veterans. That’s where the real learning happens, fighting alongside hardened troops in the field, the only classroom that matters.

  Of course, even among shock troops we’re not all trigger-pullers. Some are destined for higher things. Command and management. Like Rana and Gazi and Werz and Basdaq. The corpo won’t let them stay with us grunts after Anvil; emotional distance is a key to maintaining authority, especially when you’re wet behind the ears.

  At least, that’s what I assume. I guess there’s a chance we’ll all get impressed into Javelin because of the lamprey threat. In that case, maybe Rana—and the others—will stay close.

  We’ll see. I’m not looking too far into the future, because I’m not ready to say good-bye to the present. My mind tells me that I’ll bond like this with a new squad. My heart disagrees.

  At least we’re closer than ever during Phase Two. Instead of learning about remorts and lampreys, we learn how to keep our heads under pressure.

  We spend four days patrolling an airbase on the border of the Black Sea States. Three days on a high-altitude platform, blasting moths from the sky. We spend a week making combat drops in a skirmish with a nest of wormlike nyongolotsi—a subterranean breaching device composed of thousands of bio-forged units—that’s deeper than anyone expected. No matter how many times we clear the tunnels, they keep boiling up from fissures in this arid stretch of New Growth.

  We’re in a transport lounge when Jagzenka brushes my knee with a fingertip on her way toward the vend machines. A minute later, I stand and stretch, then wander to the vend alcove. M’bari, Ridehorse, an
d Basdaq are already there. Jag drifts away like a forgotten daydream, but Werz joins us three seconds later.

  “That’s all of us,” M’bari says to Ridehorse.

  I frown, because Rana’s not here, which means that’s not all of us.

  M’bari lenses me, “I already told her.”

  “Oh,” I say aloud.

  “What’s going on?” Werz asks him. “Should I get Gazi?”

  “Fill her in later,” M’bari tells Werz. “It’s nothing actionable. I learned what happened to Group Gabrielle.”

  “I haven’t thought of them in weeks,” Basdaq says.

  “They’re probably dead,” Ridehorse grumbles, gloomy as always.

  M’bari looks up at her. “Most of them.”

  “What?” Horror flashes across her face. “No.”

  My jaw tightens and I hear Werz gasp and murmur. Gabrielle can’t be dead. They were so . . . alive. Not hot-shit Gabrielle, who we loved hating. It’s not possible. Except I see in M’bari’s face that it’s true.

  Basdaq touches Ridehorse’s elbow, and she puts her hand over his and murmurs a prayer in a language I don’t speak.

  “Yeah,” M’bari tells her. “I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?” Werz asks.

  “The corpos are still experimenting,” M’bari says. “They don’t know what works against lampreys. They’re—”

  “Throwing shit into a wind tunnel,” Ridehorse says.

  “What happened?” Werz repeats.

  M’bari takes a breath. “Gabrielle was assigned to a Marine Boarding Unit as support staff.”

  “Marine Boarding is badass.” Werz rubs her face with her palm. “What’re they doing at the bottom of the gravity well?”

  “Guarding an equatorial orbital launch platform—that’s marine jurisdiction.” M’bari’s lens gleams. “There were reports of lamprey activity. Gabrielle was handling coms and supplies, pulses and drones. You know the drill. Three of them survived.”

  Silence falls, and Ridehorse makes a religious gesture I don’t recognize. Despite the corporate opposition to independent communities, they allow religion. In fact, they halfheartedly encourage it, as long as the practices meet their ecumenical guidelines. Maybe that’s because PRATO corporation started as a panreligious treaty organization; maybe it’s to address the human need for a deeper spirituality than is available on MYRAGE channels.

  Either way, I hope the gesture comforts Ridehorse; I wish it comforted me, too.

  “What are lampreys?” Werz asks M’bari.

  “A mystery.”

  “Narrow it down,” Basdaq tells him, with command in his resonant voice.

  I’m pretty sure that none of us care about lampreys, not right now. But we don’t want to think about Gabrielle. We can’t let ourselves imagine that golden squad lying dead and broken on some distant battlefield.

  “A remort based on an aerosolized weapon?” M’bari shrugs. “One theory says they self-assemble from atmospheric elements before each attack and dissolve afterward. I can’t find footage, but the corpos spent the past few months working on three initiatives.”

  “Three initiatives,” Basdaq echoes. “That’s a start.”

  “First is the pilot programs for the Javelin military response. That’s us and a hundred other platoons in various stages of training. Second is, they’re developing experimental weapons.”

  “What’s the origination point?” Jag asks, suddenly among us again. “Where are these things coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” M’bari says. “I don’t think Command has any clue.”

  “What I mean is, if one of them hit a space-hab . . .”

  “That’s not confirmed.”

  “What’s the third initiative?” Basdaq asks.

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “If we’re training to fight these things, why aren’t we learning about them?” Ridehorse asks. “Why are we screwing around with patriots and skirmishes?”

  “Baby steps,” I say.

  Werz rubs the back of her hand, a gesture she adopted from Gazi’s habit of touching her nursurgeon prints. “They’re waiting till we’re fully trained.”

  “Yeah,” Ridehorse says. “That makes sense.”

  “Or they’re acting out of institutional inertia,” M’bari says. “This is what happens in Phase Two of basic training, so even though we’re heading into Javelin, this is what happens in Phase Two of basic training.”

  “It’s the military,” Basdaq agrees. “They don’t make sense, they make decisions.”

  CHAPTER 29

  That night in the barracks, Ridehorse leads a memorial service for Gabrielle. She burns a fragrant wax cylinder and says a prayer in a dead language. Rana holds her hand and Voorhivey gives a surprisingly touching speech. Pico makes an inappropriate joke, perfectly calibrated to turn the mood from despair to resolve.

  Ting weeps, but more from anger than grief. She doesn’t mind the deaths, but she can’t bear the secrecy about them. “Because it erases them,” she sniffles. “The way Gabrielle died is part of their lives. A big part, now. They can’t not tell anyone. It’s like stealing their deaths.”

  None of us know what she’s talking about, but Basdaq comforts her anyway.

  We spend the next two days supporting a working group from PRATO Corporation. We prowl through gray, gauzy forests with survey equipment for three days and don’t run into any trouble.

  “Make a line!” TL tells us, when we stagger back into the JST barracks. “You’re two weeks from promotion to active duty and you’re triple-A rated, confirm.”

  “Confirm!”

  “The next two weeks is all lampreys,” she tells us. “You will eat, breathe, sleep, and dream lampreys.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Cali mutters.

  “You have something to add, Calil-Du?” TL asks.

  “I said fuck yeah, TL!” Cali barks, obviously to TL’s tone. “We will eat, drink, and shit lampreys!”

  Admin steps up and says, “Those two weeks start tomorrow evening. Until then? Welcome to your first personal day.”

  We don’t break discipline until they leave, and then a cheer sounds—and a party erupts.

  At this point, the platoon is a sprawling plural marriage. Rana sleeps with Basdaq and sometimes Voorhivey. She likes Class A, officious pricks. Gazi and Werz sleep with anyone who’ll sleep with both of them at once. Pico usually will. So will Voorhivey and Ridehorse, who also sleep with Shakrabarti. I sleep with Calil-Du and Shakrabarti and sometimes Jagzenka, while Cali sleeps with me and Ojedonn. She slept with Basdaq once, and now he avoids her. Ojedonn is religious—some kind of conservative Theodaoist—so he’s exclusive with Cali and Ridehorse. Elfano is in the middle of four love triangles, even though she doesn’t sleep with anyone. Pico sleeps with M’bari, M’bari sleeps with Jagzenka, and Ting sleeps with anyone who asks.

  I never ask. I don’t ask Rana, either, even though the spark between us burns hotter than ever. I don’t know why we stay away from each other. Ting says it’s because if we start sharing a bunk, we’ll never stop. She says we know it too, and it scares us.

  She also says this is our only chance—and she’s right.

  Still, we circle each other warily, like the spark might burn us. Pico mocks us, of course. Ojedonn tells me to seize my chance. Cali tells me I’m not good enough for Rana.

  “Calil-Du is wise,” Rana informs me, when we wander away from the party. “You’re not good enough for me.”

  “You don’t want good,” I tell her.

  She backs me against the orbital pod and kisses me. She tastes like fresh rain. I’m dizzy with the scent of her, like standing on a rooftop and watching the horizon.

  “I sometimes wonder,” she says, “how bad you are.”

  “I’m not bad.” I grab a fistful of h
er hair and roughly tilt her face upward. “Just weak.”

  She shakes her head sharply, telling me to back off, and I feel a hot flush of shame. Rana’s not Cali. She doesn’t want us to break against each other like a caravan crash. She doesn’t want to bleed for me; she doesn’t want to make me bleed. She wants something gentler and more frightening than that. She wants something I’m not sure I can offer—because Cali’s right. I’m not good enough for Rana.

  I don’t move, suddenly afraid.

  Rana puts her palm on my chest and feels me breathe. She kisses the edge of my lips. Outraged laughter sounds from the barracks, but we’re all alone here, at the beginning of a long good-bye.

  “I’ve never heard you beg,” she murmurs. “Not since that first day.”

  I smile, thinking she’s talking about sex. “I’ll beg if I have to.”

  She pulls back. “You sabotaged that CAV.”

  “No.”

  “You did. You played some angle. I know you, Kaytu. You did something.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “How? It’s not like your brain is anything special.”

  “No, but my heart is pure.”

  She laughs softly. “I mean, CAVs draw on a cry pilot’s neural activity to optimize performance, right?”

  “Well, maybe. Nobody knows for sure.”

  She gives me an odd look. “That’s been established for decades, Kaytu. CAVs absolutely co-opt your brain. That’s why they need volunteers. We know that.”

  “We do?”

  “You risked your life in a CAV without learning the basics?”

  I manage not to blurt that of course I researched CAVs before I risked my life. Though apparently I did a deeply shitty job, overlooking the fact that everyone already knew CAVs piggybacked on human brains. I’d thought the AIs were just being incomprehensible.

  “I didn’t risk anything,” I tell her. “Not on purpose.”

  “You don’t trust me.” She strokes my chest. “You don’t trust anyone except Tingting.”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  “Yes, you do. You think you know what she is.”

  “Am I wrong?”